


Other Fish in the Sea

by thedevilchicken



Category: In and Out (1997)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Community: smallfandomfest, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard goes out to LA for Emily and Cameron's wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Fish in the Sea

Emily’s wedding was a surprisingly pleasant affair. 

Howard had been at least somewhat to surprised to find the invitation sitting in his mailbox one morning; he toyed with the idea of declining it, turning the invitation over and over in his hands as he admired the tasteful embossing and felt a familiar knot of guilt tie up tight in the pit of his stomach. He kept it in his desk drawer in his classroom and glanced at it between periods for a fortnight as it sat there between his coach’s whistle and a phone number scrawled on the back of a business card. In the end he supposed he owed it to her to play a socially acceptable part in at least one of her wedding days and RSVPed sheepishly, but in the affirmative. 

The trip out to Los Angeles was strange. He packed his tuxedo and a swimsuit and almost left his ID in the refrigerator with a pair of suspenders and his wallet before he left the house in a muddle in a taxi for the airport. There were a few odd looks from fellow passengers as they tried to decide how they recognised his face and he felt a little queasy all through takeoff, though whether that was from the plane or from the nerves he was not exactly sure. He hadn’t seen Emily since their unfortunate non-wedding. He’d never been to LA. He had no idea whether he was doing the right thing and in the end the only thing he knew for sure was that airplane food was just as bad as everyone had always told him. 

But, the wedding was nice. Cameron wasn’t exactly languishing on minimum wage and so Howard really shouldn’t have been surprised by the huge marquee or the immense, crazy mansion out there in Beverly Hills. Everything seemed just a little bit gaudy; his well-pressed tuxedo was hardly the flashiest outfit on display. There was enough champagne in glasses and in guests to empty several good-sized French vineyards and the bill for the hors d’oeuvres probably spiralled higher than Howard’s salary in a year back in Greenleaf. People whose faces he recognised from who knew where made small talk with him and around him. Emily looked happy, though he didn’t venture up to speak with her. Cameron didn’t stop grinning the entire time, clapped Howard on the back and told him he was really happy he’d made it for the big day after all. And Howard couldn’t help but feel just a little out of place. 

And then, of course, there was Peter. 

Peter looked perfectly at home in his tux there at the wedding reception - _after party_ as Cameron was calling it and Howard wasn’t sure whether he should despair for that fact quietly over his next drink or credit him with a modicum of wit; sometimes with Cameron it was very difficult to say which side of the line it fell. Peter looked cheerful, smiling and chatting with more people there than Howard thought it was actually conceivable to know. He even smiled across the marquee in Howard’s direction once or twice, once the dancing started, or at least Howard supposed he might have but as events and night wore on it was difficult to say if his mind or the champagne or an entertaining combination of the two was playing tricks. Perhaps it was more accurate or more valid to say he _hoped_ he did. 

He’d known, of course, simply and honestly, that the drama of his wedding day that never really was hadn’t meant the start of a grand or sweeping romance, at least not for him; perhaps for Emily and Cameron, though he further supposed that theirs had started years before if only they’d both known it. For Howard, on the other hand, it had been a brief encounter mixed with just a smidge of wishful thinking, the kind of which he was sure his classes full of teenage students would have been quite proud because a kiss to prove a point clearly did not a relationship make. Especially not with a strange man who worked in entertainment masquerading as journalism who lived somewhere out on the west coast. And obviously Peter and Howard were far from being the only two gay men in the world.

Peter had left just as suddenly as he’d arrived, with a smile and a wave from the window of a taxi to the airport as though that could be an adequate farewell to follow the disarray into which Howard’s life had been abruptly tossed. It sounded very dramatic when he put it like that and he supposed it wasn’t quite so dramatic when he put it into the proper perspective, but it certainly felt like a degree of turmoil had been introduced. He understood, of course, that Peter was hardly to blame for that. It wasn’t Cameron, either, or himself. After all, he couldn’t think of a time that he’d actually been attracted to any of the perfectly upstanding men who were living there in Greenleaf and so his predicament could hardly have been called his fault.

“Penny for your thoughts.” 

Howard looked up as Peter sat down at the empty seat beside him, then glanced away across the room. 

“Don’t they make a lovely couple?”

Peter followed his gaze out onto the dancefloor, to the happy couple in question. They _did_ make a lovely couple, that much was really quite clear, but Peter chuckled in response. 

“Everybody’s been saying that all night,” Peter said. “When they’re not positively _seething_ with jealousy. He was Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor and he just married a high school teacher.” Peter looked at him. Howard looked at Peter. “But that’s not what I meant, Howard.”

He looked at Peter; Peter looked at him. He knew what he meant. 

Emily and Cameron’s engagement had been a whirlwind, the marriage just nine weeks from Emily’s first not-quite-wedding back in Greenleaf. Eight weeks ago, Peter had left town and Howard wondered then how such a seemingly innocent remark - although, granted, uttered on international television by a famous movie star - had sparked such an unexpected turn of events. He’d segued from a perfectly pleasant though thoroughly chaste relationship with Emily into something else entirely; he’d really hammered that point home when Peter knocked on his front door and offered him one of Cameron’s movies on VHS and a six pack of beer that Howard honestly hadn’t felt inclined to drink. 

That time, there on the couch in Howard’s house with the lights low and the movie playing, the kiss hadn’t been quite so unexpected. That time, he’d actually enjoyed it. That time, Peter’s hands had strayed a little farther south and Howard tugged at Peter’s ugly tie and found himself utterly bewildered by the situation. This was far from chaste, he’d thought, and it wasn’t wholly unpleasant in spite of that. It wasn’t unpleasant at all - it was _exciting_ , it made his heart beat faster, made his cheeks flush warmly, made him smile when Peter smiled. Suddenly, there were more thoughts in his head than living a very pleasant life with a very pleasant woman who had never seemed unduly concerned by his admiration for musical theatre. 

Peter hated musical theatre; Peter liked comedies and football and beer and sleeping nude, and he apparently liked Howard, too. And though Howard was aware - had been made aware by well-meaning friends and family throughout the town - that there were plenty of other fish in the sea and as such he had no obligation to land the first one that bit, it had turned out he liked Peter. Peter made his life messy. He'd found he liked that, too.

“How do you like LA?” Peter asked. 

“It’s just like I imagined,” Howard replied. 

Peter moved; he shifted closer just a few short inches, rested one hand on the back of Howard’s chair and suddenly a hundred lines in a hundred poems he’d read a hundred times all made sense to him in ways they never had before. He wondered how he’d ever taught them to a class before. He wondered how Peter’s card and Peter’s number on it had sat quite so long untouched in a classroom desk drawer. A wave and a smile from a taxi-cab window hadn't really been _goodbye_ ; the card in the drawer was _call me, you idiot, I want to see you again_.

“And how did you imagine it?”

“Well, I suppose I imagined it being your home.”

Peter laughed and it was easy enough then to see that Los Angeles really _was_ his home, not only because his job was there. He belonged to beaches and sunshine and stars on a sidewalk, cameras and microphones and bad ties that looked good on camera. Perhaps that was why the card had sat untouched; perhaps Howard had had a little more catching up to do.

“Come stay with me for a couple of days,” Peter said, not quite on the spur of the moment. 

“Could I stay longer?” Howard asked. 

And Peter smiled, and he nodded, and one hand strayed down to Howard’s thigh with a squeeze that wasn’t chaste at all. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. 

That week there in Greenleaf hadn’t been a chaste week; by the time Peter left, Howard had considered his horizons considerably broadened. What it had taken for Howard to discover himself was for Los Angeles to come to Greenleaf and so perhaps what he needed next was Greenleaf to go to Los Angeles, to see what else there was in him left to discover, not quite starting over but definitely starting something new. Cameron Drake had a lot to answer for; at the very least Howard thought he should send him a very nice thank you card. 

Howard looked out over the dancefloor, at Cameron and Emily, letting one hand settle there at Peter’s knee. He thought perhaps they’d leave together, and felt his cheeks flush warmly at that thought. There was still room for his horizons to be broadened just a little further. 

And perhaps Peter Molloy wasn’t the only gay man in the world but that didn’t make him the _wrong_ one.


End file.
